Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/106

84 in the late summer of 1839. With the boat built by their own manual skill, and with supplies from their own garden, they were independent and blithe in mood. In "A Week" are sundry allusions to the Concord friends to whom they did not wave farewells,—a characteristic touch of non-conformity. They sounded their gun, however, as a final salute when they had passed from sight. The survey of the late meadow-flowers, polygonum, Gerardia, neotia, ends with a somewhat expanded comment on the "large and conspicuous flowers of the hibiscus, covering the dwarf willows and mingled with the leaves of the grape, and we wished that we could inform one of our friends behind of the locality of this somewhat rare and inaccessible flower before it was too late to pluck it." They did find a messenger and the beautiful, brilliant hibiscus moscheutos came to this friend, Miss Prudence Ward, who, with her mother, visited for many years in Concord, ever welcome guests and friends of Thoreau's aunts and mother. Mrs. Ward was the widow of Colonel Joseph Ward of Revolutionary fame, and to the letters of this mother and daughter this volume is largely indebted for much new material on the home-life of the Thoreau family. The granddaughters of Mrs. Ward now live in Spencer, Massachusetts, in a rare